IBM Very Close To Acquire Digital and Data Assets of Weather Company

A recent report by Bloomberg reveals confirmation from IBM to acquire digital and data assets of The Weather Company, which includes Weather Channel and Weather Underground.

The Weather Company and IBM may seem like an odd pairing at first, but IBM already has a partnership with the Weather Company to jointly sell its weather data services and incorporate that data into its cloud-based (no pun intended) Watson services.

IBM said that the Weather Company generates an extremely high volume of data. Rather, the real value of the company was its cloud-based mobile app, installed in millions of Apple iPhones, and its weather forecasting and analytics tools.

The deal will allow IBM to extend its Watson Internet of Things unit and allow it to deliver “new kinds of advanced weather analytics to customers in multiple industries, such as retail, airlines and transportation”.

The Weather Company brands include weather.com, wunderground.com, and intellicast.com, as well as a business to business enterprise. More of that data will be moved to SoftLayer, Picciano said.

The whole mission is to provide better predictive capabilities in the hands of our clients, says Glenn Finch, global leader of big data and analytics for IBM Global Business Services. Imagine you mash up weather data and Twitter data and economic data [in a specific city]you get this signal that produces unbelievable analytic power, he says. IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty has been banking on big growth from its cognitive computing arm known as Watson.

Along with the new Spark-as-a-Service, IBM announced it redesigned and simplified the architecture of several software solutions and services using Spark.

Currently, the weather company is owned by two private equity firms as well as the NBCUniversal division of Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA). The trio paid $3.5 billion for the company in 2008, reported Re/code. It remains a trusted source of weather information, with 45% of US households turning on the channel each month, according to the company’s data.

IBM’s artificial intelligence computer Watson is expanding into the weather forecast territory. In late 2013, the television channel endured a bitter public fight with DirecTV over carriage fees, and earlier this year Verizon FiOS dropped the channel altogether.

But this deal with IBM makes a sense after seeing their existing relationship.